


Ornithogalum (reconciliation)

by S_Horne



Series: August in Bloom [27]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Getting Back Together, M/M, Post-Break Up, Well - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 03:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Horne/pseuds/S_Horne
Summary: “I think about you every day.”Tony’s voice brought Steve out of his thoughts and back into the room. He shuffled himself from the arm of the couch until he could drop down onto the cushions, envelopes crinkling below him as he sunk into the comfort of Tony’s voice washing over him.“I think about you every day, every time that I walk past a book store or a bakery, a bar or a library. Everything that I see reminds me of you, no matter what it is. Did you know that I almost didn’t get on the plane?”Steve jolted at that, his mind moving at a hundred miles an hour. Was it really true that Tony almost didn’t go? Tony had left so easily, coming to see Steve once to tell him that he was leaving and then just walking away without a pause in his step. Nothing had ever really seemed to bother Tony, and normally Steve admired that. That day, though, Steve could have done with some emotion.Anything other than Tony walking away with no hesitation after breaking Steve’s heart into roughly four hundred pieces.





	Ornithogalum (reconciliation)

There was a voicemail flashing on the landline when Steve returned home. Absentmindedly, he pressed the button to play the recording as he sorted through his mail, throwing some of the envelopes down into piles on the couch as he listened to his mother rambling on about something or other before finally confirming their dinner plans. Why the woman didn’t just text him like everyone else, Steve would never know.

The only reason that Steve had a landline was for his mom to use. Though everyone else used his cell, for some reason his mother had an aversion to texting. Steve didn’t mind all that much. If anything, he liked that they had something that was special just for them. Even if Steve was never in when Sarah called him and she ended up leaving a message for him nine times out of ten.

The message finished and the automated voice announced that there was also a second one. Steve snorted before it started, expecting to hear his mom’s voice changing the time of their meeting or possibly a butt dial of Sarah singing loudly whilst doing the dishes or sorting laundry. So when he heard a voice that he hadn’t heard for months suddenly amplified in his living room, Steve startled almost comically.

“_Hi_.”

Though the message started simply enough, even that single word was enough to bring Steve to his knees. God, that _voice. _Steve reached out and grabbed the arm of the couch for support as Tony carried on speaking.

“_It’s me, Tony_.”

Steve rolled his eyes at that; of course Steve knew who it was. Like he could ever forget Tony, the stupid, insecure man. That very voice coloured nearly all of Steve’s dreams.

“_I’m at a bar_.”

Steve huffed out a laugh at that; he knew that too. So far in the phone message, Tony had only said a few words in short passages, but Steve recognised the slur to his words and the pauses between each sentence as he thought carefully about what he was going to say next. The music in the background was a bit of a giveaway, too.

“_I’m in Sacramento_.”

And that was something else that Steve knew. He remembered all too well the day that Tony had come to him and said that he had gotten a promotion with his work and that he would be leaving within the month.

“_I miss you_.”

And, well, that was something that Steve did _not _know. He had no idea that Tony missed him; that wasn’t a thought that he would ever let himself entertain. It hurt too much. It opened too many possibilities, too many hours put at risk where Steve was in real danger of doing very little but dreaming about Tony turning up on his doorstep and begging him to take him back.

He and Tony had been together for a few months. From the start, it had very much been more of a ‘they’d fallen into bed when drunk once and never really defined the relationship’ than a real boyfriend and boyfriend adult relationship. Steve hadn’t known that he had meant anything to Tony outside of the bedroom, though he’d wished in secret. There had been so many nights where Steve had lain awake and watched Tony asleep next to him, carefully memorizing every line on his face and every tiny flutter of his eyelids. The few dates that they’d gone on were crystal clear memories in Steve’s mind and there was even a shameful photo album saved on his phone of pictures of Tony, and Tony alone.

“_I think about you every day_.”

Tony’s voice brought Steve out of his thoughts and back into the room. He shuffled himself from the arm of the couch until he could drop down onto the cushions, envelopes crinkling below him as he sunk into the comfort of Tony’s voice washing over him.

“_I think about you every day, every time that I walk past a book store or a bakery, a bar or a library. Everything that I see reminds me of you, no matter what it is_. _Did you know that I almost didn’t get on the plane_?”

Steve jolted at that, his mind moving at a hundred miles an hour. Was it really true that Tony almost didn’t go? Tony had left so easily, coming to see Steve once to tell him that he was leaving and then just walking away without a pause in his step. Nothing had ever really seemed to bother Tony, and normally Steve admired that. That day, though, Steve could have done with some emotion.

Anything other than Tony walking away with no hesitation after breaking Steve’s heart into roughly four hundred pieces.

“_But then I did, because I knew that you didn’t want me around anyway_.”

And what was that supposed to mean?

Steve blinked and stared at the answering machine as though that held all of the answers. Since when had it been that Steve was the one who didn’t want Tony? That wasn’t right, that was not the right way around at all. It had been Tony who had walked out so easily, made the decision with no thought for their relationship and the wonderful thing that it could have become.

Tony had been gone the next week.

To Steve’s mind, California was not that far away at all and Steve had been more than prepared to suggest the long distance thing as soon as the word Sacramento left Tony’s mouth, but apparently Tony had already decided that that wasn’t what they were going to do. Nope, he had just cut and run.

“_You wanted a clean break_. _But it didn’t work, not for me. I could never move on, I couldn’t forget._”

Neither could Steve, he thought incredulously. He wouldn’t have admitted the small wave of thrill that he got from Tony’s confession to anyone, but he felt it. It was probably sadistic of him, but the feeling was especially strong when Tony’s voice broke as he spoke. Steve got a tiny rush of something from just knowing that he did actually have some effect on the other man, an effect that he had not known he had had when they had been together.

It showed that Steve had meant something to Tony, that his love hadn’t been as entirely unrequited as Steve had cried about for so long.

“_I still remember what we did_,” Tony spoke again. He went quiet for a moment and the sounds of the bar behind him got louder until there was a deep sigh. “_I remember the kisses, the touches. I still remember the way you taste._” Tony’s voice had dropped to a frankly obscene husky whisper and, coupled with the soft confession, his speech stopped Steve in his tracks. He was torn between crying and being ridiculously turned on, and he wished he could say that it was a new feeling. Unfortunately, when one was in love with Tony Stark, it was a battle that occurred quite a lot.

“_I think about you all the time_,” Tony continued and Steve slid his hands under his thighs to stop himself from reaching out for the phone. He didn’t know if he would delete the recording or press redial.

“_I think about you when I go to bed, I think about the noises you would make for me and the way that your skin would flush under my touch. I remember the way you’d laugh in a morning when you woke up first, teasing me that you would have to leave me there alone and go for your run unless I could find another way to exercise. I still think about that first night we spent together, the second night, and the last night. I wish we could have more; I wish I could still be the one to swallow your moans, to soothe your cries. I want to make you laugh, want to be there when you come home._”

Steve felt tears well up in his eyes and the urge to stand up and grab the phone got even stronger. He wished that he had the strength to stop the recording from playing, but he knew that he wanted to do the stupid thing of calling Tony back to beg him to come home even more.

“_Steve, I_…”

It was then that Steve lost it. At the sound of hearing his name in Tony’s voice for the first time in months, he crumbled forward as though his strings had been cut. 

“_I love y_–”

Steve jumped up at the sound of the machine’s message ending with a cruel beep and almost screamed when the options for the message were listed instead of Tony finishing his words. Tony had just been about to…

No, he can’t have been. Steve heart was beating out of his chest, had he really been saying _that_?

No, no, he couldn’t have been, Steve thought desperately, frantically. Tony was drunk. It was just the drink talking.

_“Press 1 to listen to the messages again. Press 2 to save the messages. Press 3 to delete the messages.”_

Steve barely even registered the automated voice talking him through his options once again. His mind was elsewhere, a thousand miles away.

Tony had never said that before. There had never even been a time that Tony had gotten close to saying that to Steve. As much as Steve had dreamt about it happening, had had to physically bite his own tongue to stop the words from spilling out, Tony had never given any hints that the same thing had been happening to him. Love hadn’t been part of their arrangement.

But, having said that, Steve had been drunk with Tony before and Tony wasn’t an emotional drunk. A happy and overtly-sexual one, yes, but not an emotional drunk. Not like Steve, who frequently professed his love for strangers he met in bars and clubs whenever he had more than two drinks.

Maybe Tony really had been trying to tell him that he actually did…

_“Press 1 to listen to the messages again. Press 2 to save the messages. Press 3 to delete the messages.”_

There was a part of Steve that was desperate to ring back and beg Tony to explain himself, to ask whether it had been serious and the God’s honest truth.

But Steve knew that Tony would be mortified if he was in fact black out drunk and hadn’t meant to do any of it. If he’d known that he had rung Steve and spilt all of his secrets to an answering machine, then Tony would have hated himself.

Steve shouldn’t ring back. He needed to let it go.

_“Press 1 to listen to the messages again. Press 2 to save the messages. Press 3 to delete the messages.”_

Steve sunk his teeth into his lower lip, trying to focus on the slight sting of that instead of the lump growing in his throat. He tried to placate himself with the thought that Tony might ring back. That would be better in the long run; if Tony remembered what he had done and what he’d said on the phone and rang back to tell Steve that it _wasn’t_ just the drink talking.

Steve could wait for that.

_“Press 1 to listen to the messages again. Press 2 to save the messages. Press 3 to delete the messages.”_

But what if Steve was meant to ring back? He let out a loud groan and threw his hands up, heels digging into his eyes hard enough to see swirling patterns of random colours. Why was everything so damn hard?

That could have been what Tony had wanted all along, what he had planned to happen. Steve would ring Tony and tell him that he wanted him. It was Tony’s master plan; it had to be.

_“Press 1 to listen to the messages again. Press 2 to save the messages. Press 3 to delete the messages.”_

But Steve had no guarantee that that was indeed the case. His head was starting to hurt with the number of conflicting thoughts firing in his brain, thousands of tiny voices screaming out over each other to be heard and making him feel dizzy. He swayed a little where he stood, the backs of his legs catching the edge of the couch cushions and making him wobble again.

His fingers literally itched to pick up the phone. The words that he would say to Tony were already burning on the tip of his tongue, just as they had been for months.

The only thing holding him back was the question of would Tony actually come back if Steve told him that he loved him too?

Steve didn’t think he would be able to survive watching Tony walk away for a second time.

_“Press 1 to listen to the messages again. Press 2 to save the messages. Press 3 to delete the messages.”_

Silence. He knew what he had to do.

_“Message–”_

**Author's Note:**

> My wifi is super spotty, so I'm sorry some of these are slightly late. If you're reading these as a series, thank you for the endless support and wonderful encouragement. If you're reading one-offs, then I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> However you read it, I want to thank you. I do also have a [tumblr](https://s-horne.tumblr.com/)


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